Data Privacy Alert: Spanish DPA Fines Google €10 Million
By Tim Rollins
The Spanish data protection authority, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), issued its largest fine ever in May 2022 against Google for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Google’s fourth fine under the regime that went into effect in 2018. Overview On May 18, 2022, the AEPD issued its decision against Google, imposing a fine of €10 million for violations of two articles of GDPR. The two violations were against Article Six, regarding lawful processing of data, and Article 17, regarding the “right to be forgotten.” Google’s Article... Read More
We've got a really exciting episode of FTK Over the Air that I'm proud to share with you here. If you're at all interested at what policing is going to look like just a few years into the future, you owe it to yourself to catch this episode. In it, Justin and Lynne talk with John Price of the West Midlands Police in the UK. John has pioneered the first cloud-based digital forensics platform powered by FTK Central in Microsoft Azure. With nearly 7,000 officers able to work cases remotely and upload evidence... 
There are so many causes out there that deserve funding, it’s hard to pick which ones are most worthy. Chances are you have a few causes that you give to. (For me, it’s a local education non-profit, my public radio station, and the animal shelter on a regular basis, with the occasional small one-off here or there.) But you probably recognize that there are more causes that deserve funding. Three that we’re pretty sure are deserving are the American Red Cross, Stand Up to Cancer, and the Make a Wish Foundation. I... 
This article first appeared in eForensics Magazine, vol. 10, issue no. 5, in May 2022. Exterro is reprinting it here to further spread the message about the importance of protecting the mental health of digital forensic investigators. Justin Tolman, Exterro FTK Product Evangelist, is the author of the article and served as a computer forensic investigator for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Around 2015, I was working as a digital forensic investigator for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. I was analyzing computers seized as evidence in criminal investigations, helping bring... 
While parties to a legal matter have an obligation to produce relevant ESI during discovery, there are limits to what production they can compel from third parties, including employees. In the matter In Re Pork Antitrust Legislation, the court found that a party, in this case a company, was not in “control” over its employees’ personal devices, even when used in connection with work-related activities, so did not have a duty to produce texts from those devices. Overview In this antitrust case, key players in the American pork industry are accused of price fixing... 
Commonly referred to as a "digital fingerprint," a hash value is a special encryption code that is associated with each computer file. Hash values provide digital files with a unique identifier that corresponds to its contents. If the contents change, the file's hashtag will change as well, indicating that the file is not the same as it was before. In e-discovery, one can compare hash values before and after collection to verify that a file is the same before and after collection. To understand how MD5 hashing relates to e-discovery one must...